"Sumitomo Corporation's Dirty Energy Trade", Dec 2019

...The [Japanese] government launched a feed-in-tariff renewable energy incentive program in 2012, opened up the electricity sector to new producers leading to a surge in power plant projects, and also set out energy mix targets which encouraged the construction of a new wave of coal plants. While the renewable energy incentives made Japan the second largest market for solar in the world, it also led to a boom in biomass power plants whose feedstocks – palm oil, wood chips, wood pellets and palm kernel shells (PKS)– contribute directly to the loss and degradation of forests in Southeast Asia, Canada, the United States and beyond, and worsen climate change.

Sumitomo Corporation stands at the center of these two damaging trends. The massive trading company is involved in coal mining, importing coal into Japan and building coal-fired power plants. It also is the largest importer of wood into Japan for biomass energy and a leading builder of wood-burning power plants. Other members of the Sumitomo Group are also implicated in related environmentally-destructive practices, including Sumitomo Forestry which is active in the wood pellet import business, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, a leading financer of coal power plant projects...

In August 2019, Sumitomo Corporation communicated an updated climate policy that it will reduce the share of coal in its portfolio; will not develop new coal-fired plants; and will cap thermal coal production at current levels. This was a positive development, but it fell short of what it should do. Loopholes allow for continued coal plant construction, and the policy does not ensure real reductions in coal mining or coal generation...